Book
Интеллектуалы и демократия. Российский и польский взгляд
Kirill Solovyov offers a polemical review of the book "Piterschiki." Russian Capitalism: The First Attempt by Lev Lurie, published in St. Petersburg. In the book it is noted that in Russia there developed a singular version of capitalism where the solo part was allotted to the State and its representatives. It was, in the first place, not enterprising merchants who had risen from peasants but men who had a legal education and held a rank under the Table of Ranks that constituted the business elite of the capital. Drawing on historical studies, including statistical findings, the author of the book presents a picture of the contradictory social "architecture" of St. Petersburg society.
The article examines the key features of innovations in education, analyzes the economic interests of major stakeholders at the present stage of development of education and substantiates proposals on the need for theoretical rethinking and conceptual development of the principal models used today for describing the range of problems in general education.
In the article the necessity of institutional changes on the way to sustainable ecological-economic development and the multidirectional nature of the process is proved. The authors offer the ways of forming effective institutional mechanism. And the features of institutional transformations in Russia are emphasized.
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
The results of cross-cultural research of implicit theories of innovativeness among students and teachers, representatives of three ethnocultural groups: Russians, the people of the North Caucasus (Chechens and Ingushs) and Tuvinians (N=804) are presented. Intergroup differences in implicit theories of innovativeness are revealed: the ‘individual’ theories of innovativeness prevail among Russians and among the students, the ‘social’ theories of innovativeness are more expressed among respondents from the North Caucasus, Tuva and among the teachers. Using the structural equations modeling the universal model of values impact on implicit theories of innovativeness and attitudes towards innovations is constructed. Values of the Openness to changes and individual theories of innovativeness promote the positive relation to innovations. Results of research have shown that implicit theories of innovativeness differ in different cultures, and values make different impact on the attitudes towards innovations and innovative experience in different cultures.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.